Friday, June 23, 2006

BRINGING IT BACK TO BASICSComic stuff to come back to League of Melbotis

Several months ago I pitched the idea of a collaborative comics review site to several folks, all of whom more or less shrugged, said something about "I don't actually read comics," and then more or less started wandering off.

Undeterred, Jim and I teamed up for a new pitch, and many of the players were roped back in by the promise of a media review site where you could talk TV, movies, comics, whatever...

I think we gave it a good shot. I really do. I have weeks and months worth of comic reviews, several movie reviews, and some TV commentary. But, to be honest, outside of the contributors, I'm not sure if anyone else was reading the site.

Meanwhile, I've been neglecting the actual comics side of things which actually spawned League of Melbotis. So, long story short, I'm going to be bringing comic reviews, commentary, etc... back to the League. It seems sort of hollow to write a 300,000 word treastise on the importance of continuity in comics when all of your other posts are about how you and Jamie spent the weekend cleaning out your toe-jam.

Bringing reviews back to LoM is intended to keep the reviews from feeling like work, which is exactly what it became over at nanostalgia.com. I felt I couldn't go to a movie or read a comic without mentally outlining how I was going to be snarky in the review.

In the end, nobody was reading the gawl-durn reviews, anyway.

The League's gameplan is this: We will not waste time talking too much about comics that are average or bad, unless the comic is so bad, I feel I must vent. We will try to sell you, the Loyal Leaguer, on comics we felt were worth the dough. Meanwhile, expect all the rest of the usual mundanity you've come to expect.

We also will attempt to return to a use of the Royal "We", which was employed for so long at LoM, but which seems to have drained away with the need for expediency in blogging.

We will also, hopefully, be profiling cool comic characters, and generally improving upon the old "Suggestions for Further Reading" bit, which we hope you once enjoyed.

Movie commentary will show up here again as well.

The bottom line is this: We don't really want to spend time managing two blogs. It's a lot of work. The League will not become completely about comics. It never was. I just hope you'll keep coming back (or reading your RSS feed or whatever) and read some of the comic-related material, as well as whatever else is the reason you keep popping back in here.

I'm feeling good about this choice. Hopefully you will be, too. My thanks to all nano contributors. We gave it a shot.